Reference List

Unsaturated Behaviour of Geotextiles

Hani Nahlawi
PhD candidate, Civil Engineering Department, Monash University, Australia.

Geotextiles are becoming more commonly incorporated in many engineering applications ranging from road pavements, embankments reinforcement, foundation stabilisation, to landfill covers and liners systems. Research is currently undertaken to increase knowledge of the unsaturated behaviour of geotextiles installed in earthen systems where unsaturated moisture flow is predominant.

Hani Nahlawi from the Department of Civil Engineering, Monash University is currently doing his PhD research project under the supervision of Associate Professor Malek Bouazza aiming to provide theoretical insight, laboratory experimental testing and numerical simulation for the water flow through nonwoven geotextiles. The research includes developing a one-dimensional soil-geotextile column test apparatus for experimentally measuring the unsaturated nonwoven geotextiles hydraulic parameters under conditions of surface water infiltration.

During experimentation the transient pore-water pressure response and the advancement of the infiltration wetting front are monitored using a set of sensors installed through the sides of the cylindrical Perspex column. An ICT International monitoring system comprising a data logger, set of pore water pressure and suction measurements sensors, and sensor interfaces, are used in this column test apparatus. ICT International PCS Windows software for PC logging is used as well. Preliminary testing has been conducted on nonwoven geotextiles embedded in 1.6m of sand soil layer.

The research objectives includes interpretation and presentation of the experimental results and implementation of the findings for reliable assessment of unsaturated nonwoven geotextiles in geostructures field applications.

Links

• Hani Nahlawi, PhD candidate profile, Civil Engineering Department, Monash University
  
•  The Monash Geomechanics Group

Related Paper

Bouazza, A., Zornberg, J.G., McCartney, J.S., Nahlawi, H. (2006). Significance of Unsaturated Behaviour of Geotextiles in Earthen Structures. Australian Geomechanics Vol41 No3 September 2006, pp. 133-142. (240K PDF)

References

Ho, A.F. (2000). Experimental and numerical investigation of infiltration ponding in one-dimensional sand-geotextile columns. M.Sc. Thesis, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada.

Iryo,T. and Rowe, R.K. (2004). Numerical study of infiltration into a soil-geotextile column. Geosynthetics International, Vol. 11, No.5, pp. 377-389.

Krisdani, H., Rahardjo, H., and Leong, E.C. (2006). Experimental study of 1-D capillary barrier model using geosynthetic material as the coarse-grained layer. Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Unsaturated Soils – UNSAT 2006, April 2-5, 2006, Phoenix, Arizona, USA, pp. 1683-1694.

McCartney, J.S., Kuhn, J.A., and Zornberg, J.G. (2005). Geosynthetics drainage layers in contact with unsaturated soils. Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering, September 12-16, Osaka, Japan, pp. 2301-2305, CD-ROM.

Stormont, J.C., and Anderson, C.E. (1999). Capillary barrier effect from underlying coarser soil layer. Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering, Vol. 125, No. 8, pp. 641-648.

Yang, H., Rahardjo, H., Leong, E.C., and Frelund, D.G. (2004). A study of infiltration on three sand capillary barriers. Canadian Geotechnical Journal, Vol. 41, pp. 629-643.

© 2003-2009, ICT International

    EST NSW Australia